In recent years, demands for bringing office works processed by a personal computer (hereinafter, also referred to as a “PC”) to the cloud through the use of a virtual desktop have been rapidly increased, and users thereof also tend to grow. This virtual desktop is a screen image resulting from aggregating a desktop environment, which is a base of a desktop screen image, on a server installed at a distant data center or the like by utilizing virtualization technologies. A user enters a virtual machine provided on the server from a PC operating as a client through a network, and retrieves and operates a desktop screen image. Such a virtual desktop environment allows a substance as a physical computer (client) and a desktop environment to be mutually separated and enables a user to retrieve their own screen image and environment from any one of computers, and flexibly deal with a change, a business trip, working at home, and a free address system. Moreover, the use of such a virtual desktop environment during an overseas business trip, or the like, makes it unnecessary to retain data at a client side and, as a result, brings about enhancement of security with respect to secret information.
When, however, a user utilizes a virtual desktop environment from a distant place, such as a destination of an overseas business trip, communication delay arises. Thus, delay arises in display operation on desktop screen images in executions of various application programs for e-mail, browsing of web pages, and the like, and this delay brings about obstacles to works.
In PTL 1, there has been disclosed a technology for bringing a user copy of an application program stored in a user accommodation data center (DC) positioned at a location A into a user accommodation DC located at a location B. In this technology, it is assumed a case where, after a user has created and used a user copy of an application program at the user accommodation DC located at the location A subsequent to access thereto, a request for the use of the user copy is made to the user accommodation DC located at the location B by the user. In PTL 1, however, there is not disclosed a technology in which, just like an after-mentioned exemplary embodiment of the present invention, switching between an active system and a standby-mode server is performed on the basis of a location information piece indicating the location of a client operated by a user.